The Apothecary of Flight

The Apothecary of Flight by Jane Burn is a heady flight into the art of poetry itself: its vital importance as a tool for expression; for understanding and translating the self; for articulating the sheer force and joy of poetry and the way, for a person with autism, it can hold, identify and celebrate both the smallest and weightiest of life's experiences and concepts. These unfettered and exquisite poems pulse with the details of both the wild and tame, the sacred and the humane - observing nature and animals with an artist's eye, capturing the ways in which place and time can hold the experiences of the body, memory and identity. This ongoing dialogue with poetry itself sets a visionary path towards discovery - the page as a place to root oneself, a place of deep creative freedom, self-permission, belonging and defiance. Ultimately, the form, presence and physicality of Burn's extraordinary poems move us with compassion towards the happiest solitude of words, and of love.

Jane Burn is an award-winning, working-class, pansexual, autistic person, poet, artist, and essayist. She has an MA in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University, where she won the 2022 academic prize for best overall performance. In 2022, Jane explored her neurodivergent writer's theories funded by Arts Council England and is currently putting these ideas into a book. In 2023 she was awarded a grant by the Royal Literary Fund. Her poems are widely published and anthologised. Her previous collection, Be Feared, is available from Nine Arches Press. She lives off-grid with her family in a Northumberland cottage for most of the year.